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By Floyd WhaleyTHE NEW YORK TIMES • Sunday January 26, 2014 11:08 AM

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim insurgency
group worked out the final details of a historic peace agreement yesterday that many hope will end
more than 40 years of violence that has killed tens of thousands of people and helped nurture
Islamic extremism in Southeast Asia.

“The agreement represents the culmination of decades of excruciating diplomatic efforts aimed at
ending the conflict in Mindanao,” said Richard Javad Heydarian, a political-science lecturer at
Ateneo de Manila University. “This provides an unprecedented opportunity to end one of the world’s
longest-running intrastate conflicts.”

Although many challenges remain — notably that some militant groups have refused to join the
agreement — the peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is considered a signature
achievement for President Benigno S. Aquino III.

Aquino has vowed to end the conflicts in the south that have bedeviled the Philippines for more
than a century and that would eventually hinder the nation’s ability to expand its economy and
catch up with more-prosperous neighbors.

The deal is not expected to be signed until at least next month, but that is considered a
formality.

The conflict between Muslim insurgent groups in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao and
the Christian-dominated government in the northern part of the country has simmered since the late
1800s. Every government since Philippine independence in 1946 has struggled to resolve the issue,
through peace talks and sometimes military action.

In recent decades, the conflict has claimed 120,000 lives and displaced more than 2 million
people. It has also kept the southern Philippines mired in poverty even as the country has
undergone an economic renaissance of sorts, last year becoming one of the fastest-growing economies
in East Asia, with a growth rate that surpassed China’s in some quarters.

“In a world looking for peaceful solutions to all troubles, we are grateful that we have found
ours,” said Teresita Quintos Deles, a presidential adviser on the peace talks after the agreement
was signed yesterday. “The best is yet to come.”

The Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front have been working on the details
of the peace deal since October 2012.

“This was the final agreement on the remaining details,” said Amado Mendoza, a political-science
professor at the University of the Philippines.